But at the end of the day, it's an accident. Nobody intended to kill almost 300 people having nothing to do with the conflict flying over the country. That's why I think it matters less who did it and matters more who is responsible for the conflict and for the plane flying over it.
I, too, hold the opinion that whomever was responsible probably didn't intend to fire upon a commercial airliner, but I still think that it's important that the party behind the act takes responsibility for what happened (rather than attempt to cover it up, or preventing international and independent investigations from being carried out).
As such, I could agree that it was not intentional, but I feel calling it an accident would undermine the role negligence would have had in bringing down the aircraft. It's hard for me to directly blame the airline when the route was still deemed safe for travel. Sure, they could have gone out of their way to take extra precautions, but their negligence wasn't gross; I don't know if whatever committee that deemed the route safe should be held disproportionally responsible, either.
Ultimately, if the accident hypothesis proves true, there's still the matter of those firing the weapon not taking the adequate measures to identify the aircraft, which they should have had the capability to do, making their error inexcusable.
